another whispered story

*** // www.jhny-drko.blogspot.com // ***

Jim sat on a coarse, wet curb of some back alley street with no name. The rain had just let up on this sleepless, worn out industrial town.
Pulling his last American Spirit cigarette from the pack, and folding open an old copper zippo, he rubbed the flint up the shin of his jeans and sparked a flame.
Peering through the orange-red flame and first cough of wispy, exhaled smoke he saw the faces of his six tiny soldiers. Being dangerously close to the line of molotov cocktails thrilled him. An unfortunate fall of hot ash would ignite him in a kamikaze blaze of death.
Playing with fire is what he did best. He did nine months in county with no furlough, the last three months an extension for punching some fag and breaking his nose.

He caught the fag (whom we will call Denny so I can stop using homophobic connotations such as queer, Nancy, or butt pirate) biting his lip while giving him longing, inviting glances and a quick nod & wink. Looking downward, a rule the straight inmates in prison would never be caught breaking in the showers, he saw Denny massaging a full, throbbing hard-on at a pace that mimicked slow, passionate love.
Raging, as suds burned in his eyes, he crossed the shower. Taking slow, deliberate steps across the tiled, grimy floor he went to Denny. The fag (sorry, had to do it) let go of his cock with the belief that his current fantasy was coming true. Denny stretched out his arms in hopeful embrace with his forbidden love. The six other inmates from gen. pop. now breaking from their 3 minute shower were making various convulsions of repulsion. Some even wanted to shout for the guard at either end of the shower to come and save them from the gay cowboy romance unfolding before their eyes.
Denny never saw the flash of the fist. The loud slap of crumpled flesh hitting the wet shower floor stung the eardrum. Sighs of relief and the stomping clap of guards' boots on wet tile rushed through the room.
Grappled simultaneously in full nelson and chokehold, the guards dragged Jim away. Looking back, he saw the fallen queer's body laying motionless in the corner. Blood leaked from Denny's nose onto the floor and pooled as if it were a gunshot.
The guards were hauling him off to the nearest seclusion room, and the only was Jim could gauge where he was while being dragged off was to feel what flooring slid beneath his ankles and heels. First, the tiled shower floor, then the rough concrete of an adjacent hallway into his calloused flesh. Finally, a fine polished concrete floor the inmates were responsible for waxing at least once a week. Various spheres of light reflected and overlapped on the floor. Halogen bulbs reflected up off the floor like distant orbs of flickering ball lightning cast their dim haze. This was the far side of the block reserved for the worst-tempered assholes of the prison, and being hauled through naked, openly paraded in his birthday suit, invited shouts and whistles of public humiliation. I said I'd try not to use them, so I'll just say that suddenly the cell block joined in assaulting Jim as the new gay in town. It was an archaic choir with people singing and overlapping their homophobic solos in operatic fashion.
As the door opened and Jim was pushed into the isolation cell he finally realized his own throbbing hard-on. To everyone, Jim was the latest queer to get dragged out of the showers.

(Thank you to my friend who I will refer to as Dean Martin. You're a crazy S.O.B. and we gotta chill again soon. I love hearing your tales, even if I make them way more twisted than they ever were. Try to stay out of trouble, and promise me you'll never torch a trash dumpster again, please.)